


poisoning

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Edrisa and Dani are there too but not much, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Poisoning, Whump, unconventional poison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29276775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: febuwhump day 7: poisoning.It’snota fire. It’s some kind of metallic sphere, leaking...some sort of gas that smells kind of funny.Malcolm scarcely has time to think,oh shit,before the gas starts acting on him. He feels his head start to spin, his legs start to shake, and frantically tries to reach the door, but he’s too late. He collapses to the floor a second before his hand touches the doorknob.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright & JT Tarmel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	poisoning

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!!! hope u like this fic :)

The library is loud and bustling with a dizzying array of activity, though the librarian behind the main desk doesn’t seem to mind. Possibly this is because the ones causing all the noise and disruption are the police. Possibly this is because she’s dead. 

Edrisa is next to her, leaning against the desk and writing in a notebook, Malcolm looking over her shoulder. Dani and JT are walking around the inside of the library, rounding up visitors and workers and shepherding them into one area. Gil is hunched over a computer with a security officer going over the tapes from the library’s video cameras. 

For about fifteen minutes, everything runs as smoothly as it ought to be. Edrisa looks over her notes on the body, chatting with Malcolm. JT and Dani finish rounding up everyone in the library and get to work examining the scene. Gil finds nothing of interest on the security tapes.

Then, Malcolm glances up from where he’d been looking at Edrisa’s notes. “I’ll be right back,” he says, and before she can ask him where he’s going, he’s hurrying off towards the back of the building. 

Someone’s back there. Malcolm had seen them. He knows they could just be a straggler, maybe someone who’d been in the bathroom while JT and Dani were rounding up everyone in the building, but something tells him that’s not the case. 

His suspicion seems to be proven correct when he steps out from behind a shelf and makes brief eye contact with the person, who turns and runs. 

Malcolm takes off after them, hearing someone behind him call his name but ignoring it. This very well might be their killer trying to escape! He doesn’t have time to call back a reply. 

The person runs into a small glass-walled conference room, slamming its door behind them. Malcolm sees them head for the opposite side of the room, where there’s another door…

He flings open the door to the room, but he’s too late - the person steps through the other door into some kind of hall space, and even as Malcolm runs up to it he hears a lock on the other side click. He slams a fist against the door, desperate to open it, but it’s no use. He heaves a sigh and prepares to leave and tell his team what he’s just seen. There’s still time to catch their killer at the scene of the crime, if he hurries.

Something  _ clicks  _ behind him, sounding not unlike a gun. He freezes, raises his hands, turns around...but there’s no one there. He squints his eyes, searching the room. He’d heard something, he  _ had.  _

Something is smoking in the corner. Better than a gun, he figures, but still. A fire.  _ Great.  _ He walks up to it, grabbing a plastic trashcan to cover it up with, and stops in front of it. 

It’s  _ not  _ a fire. It’s some kind of metallic sphere, leaking...some sort of gas that smells kind of funny. 

Malcolm scarcely has time to think,  _ oh shit, _ before the gas starts acting on him. He feels his head start to spin, his legs start to shake, and frantically tries to reach the door, but he’s too late. He collapses to the floor a second before his hand touches the doorknob. 

\--

“Bright?” JT steps around the bookshelf he’d seen the profiler duck behind moments before. And freezes. In front of him is a glass-walled room, quickly filling with smoke, a figure slumped, presumably unconscious, against the door. 

“Fire!” he shouts, and a second later he hears the alarm start to ring. There’s a panicked scream from the main room, and above the noise he hears Gil shouting out orders to the people in the building, telling them to get outside but stay close, telling his officers to make sure everyone is okay and to keep them close by. He hears Edrisa’s name, Dani’s name, his own name, Bright’s name…

“JT!” comes Gil’s shout, louder this time. “Detective Tarmel, where are you?”

“Back here!” he shouts back, approaching the smoke-filled room cautiously. He reaches out a hand and touches the doorknob, pulling it back instinctively at the expectation of heat. 

But it’s not hot. He reaches back out for the knob, wrapping his hand around it. It’s  _ not hot. _ He puts a hand to the glass of the door. Also not hot…

“Gil!” he shouts, backing slowly away from the room. “Not a fire!”

Footsteps come up behind him, and he turns to see Gil, looking worried and now also confused.

“What do you mean, not a fire?” he asks. 

“It’s gas,” JT says. “No heat.” He taps his fingers on the glass for effect, then realizes that Gil can’t see the person behind it. 

“Bright’s in there,” he says, stepping away from the door to let Gil look at his unconscious figure, a dark shape against the grey smoke. “I didn’t know...if I open the door, that gas is gonna come pouring out into this building. And I have no idea what it is.”

If Gil had looked worried before, he looks almost panicked now. “I’ll call for hazmat technicians,” he says, pulling out his phone. “Do you know if there’s another way into that room?”

JT shakes his head. It’s an interior room with its back to a solid wall set through the building as a divider, so there  _ may  _ be another door, but it won’t be to the outside, which means opening it will cause the same problem as opening the door in front of them. 

JT waits as Gil talks on the phone, hating the feeling of not being able to do  _ anything. _ He radios Dani to let her know what’s happening, and she tells him that the fire department’s there and coming inside.  _ That’s something at least, _ he thinks, and tells Gil he’s going to bring them back to the room.

He meets the firemen at the front door and explains the situation as well as he can as he leads them to where Malcolm is. They pause in front of the room, the firefighters eyeing it carefully. Nothing happens for a beat. Then JT sees something…

_ “Shit,”  _ he whispers, seeing the firefighters notice the same thing.

“Gil!” he calls to the lieutenant, who is still on the phone, his back to the action like he can’t bear to see it. 

Gil turns around, and immediately sees the problem, widening his eyes. The smoke is starting to seep out from under the door, thin white tendrils curling up from the floor. He informs the 911 operator of this latest development, nods, and then hangs up with a grim look on his face.

“Hazmat can’t get here for at least fifteen minutes,” he says, looking to the firefighters. “Any chance you can just...open the door and get him out?”

“Are you two the only ones left in the building?”

“Apart from him, yes,” Gil says.

“Good. You both get out and get everyone outside to back away from the building. We’ll get your guy out.”

Neither JT nor Gil is especially pleased with this directive, not wanting to leave Malcolm behind, but the firefighters have masks and they don’t, so they exit the building, guiding everyone outside away.

No more than a minute later, the firefighters return, one of them carrying Malcolm slung over their shoulder. They hurry him into an ambulance, and Gil goes to join them. “You and Dani are in charge,” he tells JT. “I want you to get everyone’s names and have our officers take those that are willing to give statements back to the precinct. The hazmat technicians will be here soon, and I want you and Dani to stay and help them set up a perimeter and answer any questions they have as best as you can.”

JT nods his assent as Gil steps into the ambulance. “Call us as soon as you know anything,” he says, seeing Gil nod as the doors close. 

\--

Gil settles down in the ambulance beside Malcolm, who is lying flat on the stretcher, breathing shallowly, looking far too pale, and still unconscious, though not for long. A paramedic holds a smelling salt under his nose, and Malcolm jerks awake, much to Gil’s relief. It’s short-lived, though, when he sees the kid’s face scrunch up in pain.

\--

The very first thing that he feels is his lungs. Which are on fire. They are absolutely  _ burning  _ with every shallow breath he takes, and he wishes desperately to go back to whatever state he’d been in before he’d woken up...wherever he was. An ambulance, he figures, if the sound of a siren and the blurred scenery around him is anything to go by. 

He coughs as he tries to sit up, feeling his head pound with the effort. The slight change in position is enough to make him wildly dizzy, and he’s grateful when a hand pushes him gently back down. Wait. He  _ knows  _ that hand. He squints his eyes, focusing hard enough to make out the shape of Gil sitting next to him, his hand still on Malcolm’s chest.

“Wh...happened?” he asks, coughing again. His chest burns hotter still. His head pounds. He waits for Gil to answer him.

Gil says nothing. 

“Gil,” Malcolm pleads, feeling like he’s spinning directionless in more ways than one. He doesn’t remember what happened to him, which is fairly terrifying. It could have been  _ anything. _ Clearly it’s something bad, if Gil won’t tell him. 

“You were poisoned,” Gil says, finally, reluctantly.

He...definitely does not remember that. Still, he thinks grimly, it’s far from the worst thing that could’ve happened to him. He asks the next question that floats to the top of his brain. “W’th what?”

“A gas. We’re not sure what yet.”

That is  _ horribly  _ not reassuring, Malcolm thinks. It  _ is  _ interesting, though. But he’ll think about that later, he decides, as his head gives an especially painful throb. He closes his eyes as another wave of dizziness follows it. 

“You still with us, kid?”

He nods slightly.  _ Unfortunately. _ God, he’s never been this dizzy in his life. 

“We’re almost there,” Gil continues, which Malcolm decides is some reassurance. The hospital, while far from his favorite place, is bound to have something to make his head stop hurting.  _ Maybe they even have something to figure out what’s happened to him… _

He lets those thoughts sustain them until the ambulance arrives, and then they’re moving him, and Gil’s walking beside him, talking about something Malcolm can’t focus on, because all he can focus on is his own body, which is not taking its sudden movement too well. It takes every ounce of his willpower to fight the nausea that rises in his throat, and his head pounds with every inch they move, and he barely manages to keep himself conscious.  _ He just wants this to be over… _

And suddenly, it is. They stop moving him along, and then someone gently lifts him up and places him onto a surface that he recognizes as a hospital bed, and something cold and wet touches his arm and then a needle slides into it. Seconds later, and _ finally, _ the pain of everything fades away. 

“You’re going to be okay,” he hears Gil say from beside him. He briefly wonders how Gil can possibly know that, but then sleep is pulling him under, and for once he doesn’t fight it.

**Author's Note:**

> i swear writing this was such a weird experience...i couldn't find any poison gases that worked how i wanted them to so i just made shit up Completely but i asked my mom about how fire/rescue services would respond to an unknown gas leak to make That part accurate....  
> enough about my questionable creative process lmao. hope u liked this story and thanks for reading!


End file.
